The present invention relates to refuse carts, and more particularly to refuse carts that may be stacked together for shipment.
Refuse carts are common in commercial and residential settings for transporting waste. Common refuse carts include a container for holding refuse, and a pair of wheels and an axle for rolling the cart. The container is usually comprised of molded plastic, and includes sidewalls and a floor that define a space for containing refuse. The axle is supported on the container, and the wheels are supported on the axle. A handle may be included for pushing or pulling the cart on the wheels.
In order to take full advantage of shipping space, manufacturers of refuse carts generally stack a number of carts together for shipping. Most commonly this is done by stacking carts together, one container inside another, with only the bottom cart assembled with wheels and an axle. This allows the containers to be stacked tightly together, and reduces the required shipping space per container. The wheels and axles for each remaining stacked cart are often stowed in the empty space between each nested container. More recently, however, manufacturers have increased the draft angle of the sidewalls in order to more densely stack the containers. In these cases, the axles do not fit in the space between stacked containers because they interfere with stacking. Consequently, the axles for all of the containers in a stack are often shipped together as a group. This presents a number of difficulties. First, it is possible to miscount the axles, and thereby ship too few axles for a stack, resulting in one or more useless containers without wheels. Second, some manufacturers provide a separate box or container for stowing the wheels and axles, but these separate containers create an extra cost and they partially defeat the space saving purpose of stacking the carts in the first place. Third, other manufacturers place the wheels and axles for all of the carts inside the top container. This method does not take up additional storage space, but is recognized as being undesirable because the weight in the top container makes the stack top heavy and more difficult to handle.